Grub question (Ahem....help! Now it just says 'GRUB')

[Mark Knecht]

Good morning,
   Using rez gzq's original idea that since I was going to install FC2
I would get a new copy of grub in a different partition and I would be
able to pick up my Gentoo installation using that grub I went ahead
and did the install of FC2. It's up and running successfully, and I
have access to my main Gentoo installation also. Great idea, and
thanks.

   I do notice that the FC2 default grub.conf file does not boot Win
XP Pro correctly so I'll have to go figure that out later. Possibly
there is a simple fix for that, or possibly it's a good reason to use
System Commander 7 in the MBR instead of grub. Not sure. I am still
able to get to XP through System Commander 7's boot features so
nothing lost. Thanks to all who answered.

   I am still perplexed as to why grub seems to have failed, or at
least why it failed when it did. On my original setup I had

/dev/hda5 - Gentoo /boot with grub (bootable)
/dev/hda6 - swap
/dev/hda7 - Gentoo /
/dev/hda8 - FC2 /boot with grub (bootable)
/dev/hda9 - FC2 /

Since the Gentoo grub was installed in the first sector of /dev/hda5 I
would have thought that it would fail when I moved hda5 at the
beginning of the process to set up FC2. However, as I remember things
it did not fail then, but failed when I moved hda7. I just do not
understand that.

I do think that, if you are going to use grub on something other than
the MBR, having two copies of grub out on different partitions is an
attractive safety feature. This way if I have to move one partition
you still have another to get things booting. Probably overkill, but a
small partition with nothing but grub in it is not a big price to pay
except for the complexity.

At this point I'm left with solving the Windows boot problem from
grub, getting Gentoo's grub reset in it's boot partition, and then
updating FC2 using PLanetCCRMA for bleeding edge audio. It will be fun
to compare FC2 with updates done by pros to what I've been able to
accomplish with Gentoo. I have no fantasies about while will likely
work better! ;-)

Cheers,
Mark


On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 21:51:43 -0700, Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com> wrote:
> > use a partition manager (or the one that comes with Linux install) and see
> > if the old hda5 or hda7 or whatever) have changed numbers
> >
> > goodluck
> >
> > John
> 
> The partition numbers (according to both Linux and System Commander 7
> & 8.1) did not change.
>